Big hedge fund Ken Griffin’s record donation to Carnegie Mellon University for a new Miami campus — months after he was dragged by Mayor Zohran Mamdani to promote his pied-à-terre tax — is “a loss” for New York, the head of the city’s business advocacy group said Sunday.
Citadel’s CEO pledged $2 billion last week to support the launch of a new 35-acre campus to boost Florida’s tech industry, in addition to a $1 billion donation to the institution’s main campus in Pittsburgh.
Griffin, 57, allocated no funds to Manhattan’s Carnegie Mellon campus, which business leaders said was no coincidence after the socialist mayor used the billionaire as a model for his “tax the rich” agenda.
“This week we saw a huge gift to Miami from Ken Griffin of Citadel: $3 billion. When people have a second headquarters and a second office, philanthropy doesn’t double,” Steve Fulop, the partnership’s New York City president, said on 77 WABC’s “Cats Roundtable.”
“This money is shared between different places. When Ken Griffin, who was there in New York and Chicago, goes to Miami and gives this money (outside), it’s a loss for us,” Fulop told host John Catsimatidis.
Fulop, a Democrat who served as Jersey City mayor for three terms before stepping down last year, also addressed a recent Post report that members of Hizzoner’s inner circle planned to use influencers to defame the city’s business leaders.
“This seems like a very extraordinary measure from a negative perspective, especially when you think about the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare,” Fulop said, adding that the targeting of executives by Democratic Socialist operatives with ties to City Hall would be “beyond the pale.”
“We’re in an environment where there’s a lot of mental illness. And, of course, there’s more political violence. I contacted the mayor, his political director, his (communications) director. We all connected and they said that’s not true. And so, you take him at his word. (But) you stay alert and vigilant. You have to take (Mamdani) at his word because nothing has happened yet.”
In April, Mamdani filmed a social media video in front of Griffin’s 24,000-square-foot property at 220 Central Park South, saying the billionaire’s second home — purchased in 2019 for $238 million — illustrates the need for a pied-à-terre tax.
The controversial tax on second homes and co-ops worth at least $1 million, and one- to three-family homes worth more than $5 million, passed this summer but ran into a legal problem last week when a state Supreme Court judge ruled that New York City improperly published the names of more than 900,000 residents and individuals for whom the tax was wrongly directed.
The city was ordered to restart the pied-à-terre tax rollout from scratch. The city’s lawyers had already filed a notice of appeal.
Nearly 20 percent of the state’s tax revenue comes from the securities industry, which state officials estimated last year accounts for about 8 percent of the city’s jobs.
“Citadel, Goldman, JP Morgan, Apollo all talk about Texas attractions. It’s bad for New York,” Fulop said. “We have to solve this problem.”
Griffin’s gift was the largest gift ever to an educational institution, eclipsing former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion endowment to Johns Hopkins in 2018.
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